Help with a Stalin quote please

[tir1944]

I have problems "digesting" this quote of I.V.Stalin

Stalin : American democracy and the Soviet system may peacefully exist side by side and compete with each other. But one cannot evolve into the other.
The Soviet system will not evolve into American democracy, or vice versa. We can peacefully exist side by side if we do not find fault with each other over every trifling matter.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm

What does it really mean? Wasn't Khruschov fiercely criticzed for his policies of "peaceful coexistance" two decades later...
Sorry for a noobish question...

[dodger]

Non interference in the internal affairs of another country. Enshrined in UN charter. Basis for International Law. Respect. A very noble concept but also practical. History tells us every invasion or war was started under some pretext or other. Rivalry between social systems or whatever, especially in a nuclear age or the use of surrogates to fight wars are self defeating. A simple and transparent policy. Best to let countries evolve their own social systems at their own pace and in peace.

[Smyg]

Non interference in the internal affairs of another country. Enshrined in UN charter. Basis for International Law. Respect. A very noble concept

Wait what

[Revolutionair]

Wait what

It means you don't pump money into paramilitary groups that destabilize a country. If you would give a group that fights for national liberation 1 million dollar, then soon they won't be after national liberation anymore. They become corrupt and there will be a power struggle for the positions at the top of that group.

The FARC has real revolutionaries in it, but the narcotics trade has made money-making possible. This way people will try to rise up through the ranks in order to get access to wealth.

[Smyg]

I have said nothing about paramilitaries, only reacted to how, in lack of a better word, uncommunistic the idea of peaceful coexistence with the United States and respect for the bourgeois system and its law is.

[Zealot]

I think, taken in context, he was relating it back to what he had already said. When Stalin is asked if he understood the fear that Socialism would be introduced to capitalist nations by (military) force, he replied:

"If you think that Soviet people want to change the face of surrounding states, and by forcible means at that, you are entirely mistaken. Of course, Soviet people would like to see the face of surrounding states changed, but that is the business of the surrounding states."

The CPC also expanded on this, showing the difference in principles between Khrushchov and Stalin's comment above:

http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/peaceful.htm

[Rusty Shackleford]

Was this after the war? If so id assume its because no one was looking for another bloody fight in the Soviet Union.

[Blackscare]

It means you don't pump money into paramilitary groups that destabilize a country. If you would give a group that fights for national liberation 1 million dollar, then soon they won't be after national liberation anymore. They become corrupt and there will be a power struggle for the positions at the top of that group.

The FARC has real revolutionaries in it, but the narcotics trade has made money-making possible. This way people will try to rise up through the ranks in order to get access to wealth.

So communist insurgencies are supposed to fund themselves with unicorn farts and wishes?


If having a million dollars to buy weapons, food, and the like will destroy revolutionary character of any group, that must mean that actually taking control (and thus having access to vastly more money and resources, even in a small country, than a measly million bucks) will always lead to disaster. Seems a little bit simplistic to me.